GUEST SELECTION    <return to contents

Doctorow as Mentor
H. Stanbrough

We could begin as Doctorow began,
when writing Ragtime: write the walls and write
the ceiling and the floor of that one room
then write the daisies—write how Lynn never
stenciled them onto the orange floor
for fear the bastard landlord might evict
them both—then we could skew the pen and write
the piles of dirty dishes write the laundry
write the kitchen and the smoky vent
and books and records shoring up our stern
voyage as we wrote with our heads high
the sixties’ world of parties wine and grass

the closets and the bathroom and the stench
that crept along the hall. We could expand
into the hallway write the other tenants’
hairy bellies unshaved faces eyes
no longer dreaming yesterdays or love
and we could write the city, write the cops’
fists batons and gas and protest signs
could write the streets the burning of LA
could write a kid like us there on those streets
in uniform a Guardsman with a gun
and how his gun would tremble if he tried
to shoot and how his pen would tremble too

if he should feel a need to write the truth.
Then we could write the state and write the nation
forests valleys mountains rivers trees
and write the congress write the president
and we could write our friends away from home
not write to them but write them as they were
the jungle canopy the mud the rain
the stench of fear the bugs the blood and we
could write the oceans of the world could write
the continents the moon the solar system
the universe we know the universe
we’ve never seen but know it must be there…

as if our writing ever made a difference
or saved the smallest part of anything.
We could begin as Doctorow began
O, we could write —we could say the world.